Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

With interns from GNOME Outreach Program for Women and Google Summer of Code, MediaGoblin is in for a summer of awesome

GNU/Linux flag at the top of the Americas

GNU/Linux chosen as operating system of the International Space Station

GNU Hackers Meeting 2013: August 22-25 in Paris, France

The W3C's soul at stake

"Oscar" awarded to W3C for Best Supporting Role in "The Hollyweb"

Show your friends you care about freedom from DRM; use a banner on your social media profile

International Day Against DRM 2013 sent a message

Stepping it up as W3C takes the next step towards the Hollyweb

Help needed documenting events of May 2013 -- End Software Patents campaign

Single-board computers and software freedom

Emacs chat: Bastien Guerry

Illegal procurement favoring Microsoft killed in Portuguese court

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

LibrePlanet featured resource: List of free software webmail systems

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 19 new GNU releases!

GNU Toolchain update

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule

Other FSF events

Thank GNUs!

Take action with the FSF

Take action for free JavaScript

From May 29th
As Richard Stallman pointed out in his article The JavaScript Trap, most of the Web's JavaScript programs are not freely licensed. We're launching a campaign to demand that prominent sites stop requiring proprietary JavaScript, either by switching to a free program to do what they need, or by making the JavaScript unnecessary. The plan is to maximize impact by having as many people as possible email one site at a time. It's easy to get involved in the campaign:

By Software Freedom Conservancy, from May 1st
The campaign seeks to raise $75,000 to fund a full-time developer for one year to first reevaluate existing Free Software solutions for their viability as a nonprofit accounting system, and then improve and augment the best available system to create a new solution that will help nonprofits around the world manage their finances better. Please donate generously to this important cause!

Google abandons XMPP for instant messaging

By Parker Higgins at the EFF, from May 22nd
In several places around the Web, the company is replacing the existing "Talk" platform with a new one called "Hangouts" that sharply diminishes support for the [free] messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from [free] protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users.

GNU/Linux flag at the top of the Americas

From May 30th
GNU/Linux enthusiast Sebastian Satke has taken GNU/Linux to new heights -- literally. He summited Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, with a GNU/Linux flag in tow. Check out these incredible pictures from his ascent.

GNU/Linux chosen as operating system of the International Space Station

From May 22nd
Gnus now join astronauts of many countries in humanity's biggest space station.
This is a wise choice for the space station, and a high-profile victory for software freedom. It brings good publicity for free software, demonstrating its respected position in the world of science and technology.

GNU Hackers Meeting 2013: August 22-25 in Paris, France

From May 21st
We are happy to announce the seventh GNU Hackers Meeting, which will take place from August 22 to August 25 2013 in Paris, France. The GNU Hackers Meetings are a friendly and informal venue to discuss technical, social and organizational issues concerning GNU and free software.

The W3C's soul at stake

From May 2nd
Richard Stallman's latest piece calling on the World Wide Web Consortium to save its own soul: "Now is when the W3C should use the influence it has built up, saying, "DRM: Not in our name!"

"Oscar" awarded to W3C for Best Supporting Role in "The Hollyweb"

From May 3rd
In celebration of International Day Against DRM today, we rolled out the red carpet at W3C to deliver your petition signatures. Internet freedom's most stylish gathered to present W3C with an award for "Best Supporting Role in 'The Hollyweb'", accompanied by over 22,500 verified signatures from members of the public who oppose a proposal that would weave Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) into the fabric of the Web.
Here's our blog post with photos from the petition delivery:

Show your friends you care about freedom from DRM; use a banner on your social media profile

From May 2nd
By posting the banner, you're helping raise awareness of the problem and rallying your networks in this fight. The more people know about it, the harder it will be for Hollywood and its tech allies to slip this through. Let's stop the Hollyweb!

Stepping it up as W3C takes the next step towards the Hollyweb

From May 9th
On May 3rd, we made a powerful statement to the W3C by delivering the verified signatures of over 22,500 people against Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), Big Media's proposal to incorporate DRM support into HTML. Today the W3C advanced EME one step further in their approval process, to "first public working draft." This doesn't mean we've lost, but it shows that the media and software companies behind EME are not giving up, and that we need to keep pushing. Here's Defective by Design's blog post:

Help needed documenting events of May 2013 -- End Software Patents campaign

By Ciarán O'Riordan, from May 23rd
May brought exceptionally good pieces of news for campaigns against software patents, but I'm stuck studying for law exams. If anyone would like to help, it would be great to have better write-ups about these recent events on the ESP wiki:

Single-board computers and software freedom

From May 23rd
Single-board computers (SBCs) are computers delivered as one circuit board that are powerful enough to run a real operating system. SBCs are typically inexpensive and versatile. However, all of the SBCs currently available have major flaws -- hardware that doesn't work without running a nonfree program.

Emacs chat: Bastien Guerry

By Sacha Chua, from May 20th
In this video interview, blogger Sacha Chua chats with GNU Emacs Org mode developer Bastien Guerry. Org mode is a popular Emacs extension for planning, writing and organizing. Bastien tells stories about getting started in Emacs, reading his mail/news/blogs in Gnus, and hacking his life with Org.

Illegal procurement favoring Microsoft killed in Portuguese court

By the Free Software Foundation Europe, from May 2nd
On April 27, the administrative court of Almada, Portugal, declared a 550,000 Euro contract between Microsoft and the municipality of Almada to be illegal. The technical specifications of the competition launched by the municipality prevented any company other than Microsoft and their partners to submit a proposal.

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions to version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing. The Free Software Directory has been a great resource to software users over the past decade, but it needs your help staying up-to-date with new and exciting free software projects.
To help, join our weekly IRC meetings on Fridays from 3pm to 6pm EDT (20:00 to 23:00 UTC). Meetings take place in the #fsf channel on irc.gnu.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Everyone's welcome.
After this meeting, you can check http://www.fsf.org/events to see the rest of June's weekly meetings as they are scheduled.

LibrePlanet featured resource: List of free software webmail systems

Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use your help.
The Free Software Webmail Systems page is a place to find and share resources for people interested in doing their email on the Web without compromising their freedom. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource.

GNU Toolchain update

From May 20th
The GNU toolchain refers to the part of the GNU system which is used for building programs. These components of GNU are together often on other systems and for compiling programs for other platforms.
Read about updates to binutils, GAS, and GCC.

Other FSF events

June 7, 2013, San Francisco, CA: FSF members and friends will be gathering for a social hour to discuss FSF campaigns, with FSF campaigns manager Libby Reinish. RSVP to campaigns@fsf.org by June 5th if interested.

June 8-9, 2013, San Francisco, CA: Libby Reinish will be participating in AdaCamp

Thank GNUs!

We appreciate everyone who donates to the Free Software Foundation, but we'd like to give special recognition to the folks who have donated $500 or more in the last month.

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email signature like:
I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom! http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=2442
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section (http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.